He rose and left Harrigan to the dark, which now lay so thick over the
sea that he could only dimly make out the black, wallowing length of
the ship. After a time, he went into the dingy forecastle and stretched
out on his bunk. Some of the sailors were already in bed, propping
their heads up with brawny, tattooed arms while they smoked their
pipes. For a time Harrigan pondered the mutiny, glancing at the stolid
faces of the smokers and trying to picture them in action when they
would steal through the night barefooted across the deck--some of them
with bludgeons, others with knives, and all with a thirst for murder.
Sleep began to overcome him, and he fought vainly against it. In a
choppy sea the bows of a ship make the worst possible bed, for they
toss up and down with sickening rapidity and jar quickly from side to
side; but when a vessel is plowing through a long-running ground swell,
the bows of the ship move with a sway more soothing than the swing of a
hammock in a wind. Under these circumstances Harrigan was lulled to
sleep.
He woke at length with a consciousness, not of a light shining in his
face, but of one that had just been flashed across his eyes. Then a
guarded voice said: "He's dead to the world; he won't hear nothin'."
Peering cautiously up from under the shelter of his eyelashes, he made
out a bulky figure leaning above him.
"Sure he's dead to the world," said a more distant voice. "After the
day he must have put in with Campbell, he won't wake up till he's
dragged out. I know!"
"Lift his foot and let it drop," advised another. "If you can do that
to a man without waking him, you know he's not going to be waked up by
any talkin'."
Harrigan's foot was immediately raised and dropped. He merely sighed as
if in sleep, and continued to breathe heavily, regularly. After a
moment he was conscious that the form above him had disappeared. Then
very slowly he turned his head and raised his eyelids merely enough to
peer through the lashes. The sailors sat cross-legged in a loose circle
on the floor of the forecastle. At the four corners of the group sat
four significant figures. They were like the posts of the prize ring
supporting the rope; that is to say, the less important sailors who sat
between them. Each of the four was a man of mark.
Facing Harrigan were Jacob Flint and Sam Hall. The former was a little
man, who might have lived unnoticed forever had it not been for a
terrible scar which deformed his face. It was a cut received in a knife
fight at a Chinese port. The white, gleaming line ran from the top of
his temple, across the side of his right eye, and down to the
cheekbone. The eye was blind as a result of the wound, but in healing
the cut had drawn the skin so that the lids of the eye were pulled awry
in a perpetual, villainous squint. It was said that before this wound
Flint had been merely an ordinary sailor, but that afterward he was
inspired to live up to the terror of his deformed face.
Sam Hall, the "corner post," at Flint's right, was a type of blond
stupidity, huge of body, with a bull throat and a round, featureless
face. You looked in vain to find anything significant in this fellow
beyond his physical strength, until your glance lingered on his eyes.
They were pale blue, expressionless, but they hinted at possibilities
of berserker rage.
The other two, whose backs were toward Harrigan, were Garry Cochrane
and Jim Kyle. The latter might have stood for a portrait of a pirate of
the eighteenth century, with a drooping, red mustache and bristling
beard. The reputation of this monster, however, was far less terrible
than that of any of the other three, certainly far less than Garry
Cochrane. This was a lean fellow with bright black eyes, glittering
like a suspicious wolf's.
Between these corner posts sat the less distinguished sailors. They
might have been notable cutthroats in any other assemblage of
hard-living men, but here they granted precedence willingly to the four
more notable heroes.
Around the circle walked Jerry Hovey like a shepherd about his flock.
It was apparent that they all held him in high favor. His chief claim
to distinction, or perhaps his only one, was that he had served as
bos'n for ten years under White Henshaw; but this record was enough to
win the respect of even Garry Cochrane.
It was Jim Kyle who had peered into the face of Harrigan, for now he
was pushing to one side the lantern he had used and settling back into
his place in the circle. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.
"How'd you happen to miss out with the Irishman, Jerry?"
"Talk low or you may wake him," warned Hovey. "I lost him because the
fool ain't sailed long enough to know White Henshaw. He has an idea
that mutiny at night is like hittin' a man when he's down--as if there
was any other way of hittin' Henshaw an' gettin' away with it!"
The chuckle of the sailors was like the rumble of the machinery below,
blended and lost with that sound.
"So he's out--an' you know what that means," went on Hovey.
A light came into the pale eyes of Sam Hall, and his thick lips pulled
back in a grin.
"Aye," he growled, "we do! He's a strong man, but"--and here he raised
his vast arms and stretched them--"I'll tend to Harrigan!"
The voice of the bos'n was sharp: "None o' that! Wait till I give
orders, Sam, before you raise a hand. We're too far from the coast. Let
old Henshaw bring us close inshore, an' then we'll turn loose."
"What I don't see," said one of the sailors, "is how we make out for
hard cash after we hit the coast. We beach the Heron--all right; but
then we're turned loose in the woods without a cent."
"You're a fool," said Garry Cochrane. "We loot the ship before we
abandon her. There'll be money somewhere."
"Aye," said Hovey, "there's money. That's what I got you together for
tonight. There's money, and more of it than you ever dreamed of."
He waited for his words to take effect in the brains of the men,
running his glance around the circle, and a light flashed in response
to each eye as it met his.
He continued: "White Henshaw cashed in every cent of his property
before he sailed in the _Heron_. I know, because he used me for some of
his errands. And I know that he had a big safe put into his cabin. For
ten years everything that White Henshaw has looked at turned into gold.
I know! All that gold he's got in that safe--you can lay to that."
He turned to the sailor who had first raised the question: "Money?
You'll have your share of the loot--if you can carry it!"
They drew in their breath as if they were drinking.
Hovey continued: "Now, lads, I know you're gettin' excited and
impatient. That's why I've got you together. You've got to wait. And
until I give the word, you've got to keep your eyes on the deck an' run
every time one of the mates of White Henshaw--damn his heart!--gives
the word. Why? Because one wrong word--one queer look--will tip off the
skipper that something's wrong, and once he gets suspicious, you can
lay to it that he'll find out what we're plannin'. I _know!_"
There was a grim significance in that repeated phrase, "I _know_," for
it hinted at a knowledge more complete and evil than falls to the share
of the ordinary mortal.
"Lads, keep your eyes on the deck and play the game until I give the
word! If the wind of this comes to the captain, it's overboard for
Jerry Hovey. I'd rather give myself to the sharks than to White
Henshaw. That's all.
"Now, lads, it's come to the point where we've got to know what we'll
do. There's two ways. One is to crowd all them what ain't in the mutiny
into one cabin an' keep 'em there till we beach the boat."
"So that they can get out and tell the land sharks what we've done?"
suggested Garry Cochrane in disgust.
"Garry," said Hovey with deep feeling, "you're a lad after my heart.
And you're right. If one of them lives, he'll be enough to put a halter
around the necks of each of us. We couldn't get away. If we're once
described, there ain't no way we could dodge the law."
He grinned sardonically as he looked about the circle: "There's
something about us, lads, that makes us different from other men."
The sailors glanced appreciatively at the scarred countenances of their
fellows and laughed hoarsely.
"So the second way is the only way," went on Hovey, seeing that he had
scored his point. "The rest of the crew that ain't with us has got to
go under. Are you with me?"
"Aye," croaked the chorus, and every man looked down at the floor. Each
one had picked out the man he hated the most, and was preparing the
manner of the killing.
"Good," said Hovey; "and now that we've agreed on that, we've got to
choose--"
He stopped, going rigid and blank of face. He had seen the open,
chilling blue eye of Harrigan, who, drawn on into forgetfulness, had
lain for some time on his bunk watching the scene without caution.